Monarchism and Absolutism in Early Modern Europe

Cesare Cuttica, Glenn Burgess, Cesare Cuttica, Glenn Burgess

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317322238
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia moderna temprana

The 14 essays in this volume look at both the theory and practice of monarchical governments from the Thirty Years War up until the time of the French Revolution. Contributors aim to unravel the constructs of 'absolutism' and 'monarchism', examining how the power and authority of monarchs was defined through contemporary politics and philosophy.

1 A Culture of Political Counsel: The Case of Fourteenth-Century England's 'Virtuous' Monarchy vs Royal Absolutism and Seventeenth-Century Reinterpretations

Janet Coleman

This chapter treats the extent to which there was a defined role for counsellors in the service of good governance in fourteenth-century England. It focuses, first, not on what may be called high or abstract ethical and political theory. Rather, it looks at documents especially from the end of the fourteenth century which made explicit what was then judged to constitute good or bad government under specific kings, and most importantly, during the reign of Richard II. It was said at the time, and many centuries later, that Richard was deposed for his vices, most notorious among which was thought to be his deceitful rejection of those considered his ‘natural counsellors’. In contrast, I will attempt to construct a catalogue of what his virtues should have been, taking as ‘princely virtues’ and ‘good governance’ those qualities enumerated in coronation oaths, in documents found in the Statutes of the Realm, in the Modus Tenendi Parliamentum, and in ‘literature of social complaint’, and compare these with what Richard’s critical contemporaries described in the ‘Record and Process’ against him. This narration of his vices came to be entered into the Rolls of Parliament. Furthermore, I hope to show that the normative theory of good governance by the end of the fourteenth century in England had come to be ‘scripted’ by an ‘aristocratic/oligarchic’ small group of powerful men at the expense of any active involvement of ‘the people’. But it was also in conflict with certain interpretations of the more absolute princely theories as elaborated by civil lawyers and apparently adopted by Richard himself. By the seventeenth century, however, Hobbes’s Leviathan would sketch a sovereign power so absolute that dependence either on counsel or on the requirement that subjects deliberate on or consent to specific sovereign laws was completely eliminated.

Republics and Princes

Before we can speak about princely virtues in England during the fourteenth century there is a terminological problem that needs clarification: that of republics and their relations to princes. The medieval and Renaissance meaning of ‘respublica’ needs to be explained in order to say something reasonable about princely virtues and their dependence on good counsel. Respublica was a concept and a term employed to mean something well beyond any specific constitutional ordering of institutions. The post-Roman, European use of the term ‘republic’ did not necessarily imply any particular constitution at all and it could and frequently did apply to a monarchy. From imperial Rome onwards, including in the Corpus Iuris Civilis of Justinian, not only could a monarchy be called a respublica, but as a concept it was, in fact, opposed to another concept: tyranny and not monarchy. When the term respublica was used in England by Bracton in the mid-thirteenth century¹ and at the end of the fourteenth century (the English translation was ‘commonwealth’), what was meant was not a specific constitutional order of institutions per se: they were highlighting a ‘commonwealth’s’ opposition to rule by arbitrary whim, insisting instead on rule by law. Who made the law on the one hand, and who maintained the law on the other, were practical questions that were fought out in the histories of European cities and early states, be they monarchical or republican in institutional format.

Princely Virtues in Respublicae

Where should we look to discover what the English took to be the virtues of a prince in a respublica/commonwealth? Coronation oaths along with a variety of English parliamentary documents all provide expectations concerning the proper behaviour in carrying out the stipulated duties of the king, which were: to defend the realm, maintain law and impart justice. Pointing up the failure of Richard II to adhere to these time-honoured duties with the correct moral dispositions, the ‘Record and Process’ provides a narrative of the events and reasons for Richard II’s forced resignation or, as it was stated, his free and happily offered ‘abdication’ followed by his ‘deposition’.² Vernacular literature of the later fourteenth century, which in the past I have called ‘the literature of social unrest’,³ also provides clues as to what princely qualities were valued in good governance. Chronicle accounts, largely recording the relationships between the king and his magnates, tend to judge monarchs with respect to their military prowess and speak of the king and his magnates’ dealings not only with their own monastic communities but more widely with powerful men of the realm. All of these documents reveal attitudes to Richard II’s various failings, his vices, and by contrasting implication, to what his princely virtues were expected to be.

The list of virtues may be summarized as follows where the king is seen as feudal lord, as governor, and as judge.⁴ In general, the government of the kingdom requires of the king to have good sense, political judgement, ideally military ability, and considerable application to the everyday matters of government which flood in on him and his senior household officers and clerks. From these varied documents it may be observed that moral virtues such as prudentia, iustitia, fortitudo, liberalitas, magnanimitas, temperantia, as discussed not only in Aristotle’s Ethics but in the writings of Cicero and Seneca, and thereafter, treated by contemporary theologians who added sapientia, humilitas, caritas and misericordia to the catalogue, played their roles in the day-to-day workings of government, always understood as bound by the laws of the land and following already-established judicial procedures.⁵ The king:

• Is to keep his word, specifically to his baronial counsellors, and not, in general, be deceitful.
• He is not to break the pledges of the coronation oath; he is to swear to save and maintain the realm. Specifically, he is to keep peace, order and respect in the localities and ensure justice is done there. From the coronation oath of 1308 (till 1689): he is to grant and preserve and by oath confirm to the people of England the laws and customs granted to them by former kings of England, his predecessors, righteous and devoted to God, and especially the laws, customs and liberties granted to the clergy and people by the glorious king St Edward.
• He is to be bound in the delivery of justice by the rule of law(s) and the customs of England, not abusing justice for the sake of profit. He is, in other words, limited by, but not subject to, the common law. The only acknowledged constraints on his actions for the common good are those of natural law and right reason.
• He is to provide justice to subjects impartially, wisely, and in individual cases to exercise his patronage and ‘prerogative’ with mercy and truth. Under his discretionary mercy the king’s work is to offer grants of grace to petitions for pardons of particular crimes or grants of advancement in the Church, or to minor offices, offering annuities, money, land, goods, timber, venison, custodies of heirs and heiresses, etc. The king’s grants of grace are not to be confused with his work of governing (gubernaculum). Here he is to ensure that royal justice is provided to all free men equally and without unreasonable expense or bribery, and following the customary procedure of the ‘law of the land’. In providing justice, the king is to use his royal courts, proceeding against subjects with, not without, judgement, and not acting outside the court’s judgement. From the coronation oath: he is to act in all his judgements and with equal and right justice and discretion, in mercy and truth, according to his power.
• He is to accept the counsel and dignity of his magnates, the highest nobility, who are bound by an oath made to the crown, and not by reason of the king’s person, where necessary, to lead the king and the estate of the crown to reason.⁶ In accepting magnate counsel, he is not to use royal patronage and prerogatives, through the signet seal, so as to replace the natural counsel of magnates with other, less worthy, favourites chosen arbitrarily. Corollary: he is to accept, in effect, cooperative government, of the king with a Great Council of lords who, in giving counsel, and whose officers in the three main administrative departments at Westminster, take decisions in the king’s name and offer him advice, thereby imposing limitations on the king, where necessary, in defence of the law and the community.
• He is to accept parliament’s oversight of financial expenditure, their grants in aid and subsidies to the king which they judge as wasteful expenditure. Ideally, he is ‘to live on his own’ without continuous financial oppression of his people. Corollary: he is to respect and protect the property rights of his subjects.
• In matters brought to parliament, he is to act only with counsel and consent of his subjects. The king is, however, head, principal and end of parliament, alone in his own degree: caput, principium et finis parliamenti et ita non habet parem in suo gradu et ita ex rege solo est primus gradus.⁷ From the coronation oath (1308): he is to grant, to hold, and to preserve the laws and righteous customs which the community of his realm shall have chosen and defend and strengthen them to the honour of God, according to his power. This is not a promise on the part of the king to accept legislation made by subjects; rather from Magna Carta 39⁸ onwards, the king is to proceed against subjects only by ‘due process’, by presentment or indictment, and he is not to change the law nor impose taxes without counsel and consent of lords and Commons in parliament.
• He is to protect the Church and not interfere with ecclesiastical courts. From the coronation oath: he is to preserve for God and the Holy Church and for the clergy and people, entire peace and accord in God, according to his power.
• In sum: the king is not to rule arbitrarily or by capricious whim. He is not to turn monarchy into tyranny.

It is important to observe that there is no theory of social contract or a ‘right’ on the part of anyone or any corporate body to restrain the king. There is no implication that kings are answerable to their subjects. They are answerable to God but their political actions are procedurally channelled by the law of the land and adjusted through wise counsel of top magnate advisors.

During the later fourteenth century, then, virtuous royal rule meant rule without limit except for God and the king’s own goodwill. However, for some his goodwill includes a more direct engagement in co-ordinate governance with appropriate ‘natural counsellors’. Political rule was bound by law but even ultra-royalists argued that the king rules for the good of all ‘as the right and rational thing to do’ and not because of legal constraints on him. The right to assent to all taxation became parliament’s most powerful means of moderating a king’s requests. Arguably, by the end of the fourteenth century this became a particular right of representatives in the Commons. But the undoubted fact remained that in parliament it was the magnates (the lords who were the king’s natural counsellors) who, in effect, with the king made law to which assent was achieved in parliament. While the Commons could be, and were, critics of misgovernment, they never sought nor received a share in government. They neither sought nor received any authority to govern. The community, as represented in the Commons in parliament, petitioned, requested and consented. They came to have the right to assent to all statutes and taxes but they were not judges. Those who were judges in parliament were the king’s natural counsellors, the great magnates, who considered the requests and petitions that came from the Commons and the grants of taxation. The opinions of the common people were technically seen as the final arbiter of right and wrong through their expressed voluntas, yea or nay. But the Commons were not meant to avenge wrongs done to the commonwealth’s peace and security. This was the role of men in positions of official power, those tried in age and experience, the king’s natural lordly counsellors in concert with the king. When all were together in parliament only the community of parliament, per communitatem parliamenti,⁹ and not the Great Council, had the authority to act in the name of the whole community by doing no more than approve, assent to, or annul, affirmari vel infirmari, concedi vel negari, a proposed statute and especially financial grants in aid to the king.

A Brief History of Events in the Reign of Richard II

Richard came to the throne as a boy in 1377 during a period of socio-economic upheaval and prolonged warfare with France. He inherited a decades-long tradition of kings going to parliament to ‘request’ what many came to see as oppressive subsidies to finance warfare, a royal lifestyle and patronage. He was the son of Edward the Black Prince, who died as the eldest of Edward III’s sons during Edward’s own lifetime. To guide the child Richard a set of magnate advisors had been formally appointed as his Council, which included bishops in their capacity as lay lords, some of whom had held the highest political offices in the land – as Chancellor, Treasurer, Privy Seal (e.g. Bishop Wykeham) and were thereafter rewarded with their episcopal sees. While a king was a child, to the Council belonged governance as the lords assembled in parliament, or meeting as the Great Council, separately from the Commons. When parliament was not in session, governance belonged to the lords who had been named and chosen to be members of the continual Council.¹⁰ It was these men who were considered to be a king’s natural counsellors. The Council of the highest lords heard cases as a court and worked in close relation with the king. One of its acknowledged duties was to act as a check on the king’s patronage and benevolence. But government was not seen to be a conflict between the lords and the king. Rather, the role of the former was to assist the latter at the highest level of government. This meant that at times the Council took over government, not regarding matters of great policy decision, but in the day-to-day administration of law and order.

Richard, however, came to rely on an inner circle of friends and courtiers as advisors (Sir Simon Burley, Neville, Richard de Vere Earl of Oxford, Sir Michael de la Pole whom Richard ennobled as Earl of Suffolk and appointed his Chancellor). These actions alienated not only the gentry and burgesses but, more importantly, the leading magnates whom Richard shut out from royal patronage and profits. Their remedy was to get the Commons to petition for reform (1385): a commission of hostile lords, headed by Richard’s uncle Thomas, Duke of Gloucester, was appointed to survey royal government. Richard conceded to this commission in exchange for a financial grant. The conclusion was not to get directly at the boy king but at his favourites who were judged an unworthy and wasteful circle of corrupt advisors. Proposals centred almost entirely on proper conciliar oversight and supervision of the king by established prelates and the highest magnates who were to investigate lands, revenues and complaints against the abuse of royal justice, restrain royal gifts and ensure proper expenditure of subsidies that had been granted to the king. In 1386 Richard’s Chancello...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Contributors
• Introduction: Monarchism and Absolutism in Early Modern Europe
• 1 A Culture of Political Counsel: The Case of Fourteenth-Century England's 'Virtuous' Monarchy vs Royal Absolutism and Seventeenth-Century Reinterpretations
• 2 Royalist Absolutism in the 1650s: The Case of Robert Sheringham
• 3 Patriarchalism and the Monarchical Republicans
• 4 Cynic Kingship in the German Enlightenment
• 5 Polizey and Patriotism: Joseph Von Sonnenfels and the Legitimacy of Enlightened Monarchy in the Gaze of Eighteenth-Century State Sciences
• 6 Absolutism, Patriotism and Publicity in Denmark-Norway in the Eighteenth Century: Jens Schielderup Sneedorff, Andreas Schytte and Frederik Sneedorff
• 7 Jansenist Jurisdictionalism and Enlightenment: Two Ways of Thinking Politics in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Naples
• 8 Early Modern Absolutism in Practice and Theory
• 9 An Absolutist Trio in the Early 1630s: Sir Robert Filmer, Jean-Louis Guez De Balzac, Cardin Le Bret and Their Models of Monarchical Power
• 10 Tyrants, Absolute Kings, Arbitrary Rulers and The Commonwealth of England: Some Reflections on Seventeenth-Century English Political Vocabulary
• 11 'Monstrous' Pufendorf: Sovereignty and System in the Dissertations
• 12 Absolute Chaos, Absolute Order: The Rhetoric of the State of Nature in the Discourse of Sovereignty
• 13 Bayle on Brutus: A Paradoxical Issue?
• 14 'More Long-Lasting Than Bronze?' Statues, Public Commemoration and Representations of Monarchy in Diderot's Political Thought
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index